Obama's broken clock on immigration

President Obama was better than usual, but not as good as he should have been, during a speech about immigration policy reform he gave in El Paso on Tuesday afternoon. (Text of speech here.)

He correctly noted that the current system is broken, that we train our own competition, break up families, and generally do ourselves no favors with the current system. He also said -- and I agree -- that immigration reform is "an economic imperative."

He gave better lip service than usual to the important point that illegals are illegal, and that people who broke the law to come here or stay here should not be rewarded, not least because of how unfair it is to people who wait years to do it the right way.

Being who he is, Obama couldn't help but get in a couple of jabs against the Republicans, stupidly making it far too transparent that his push on this issue is at least as much due to electoral politics than to his caring about policy.